


It's Either Sadness or Euphoria

by fabricdragon



Series: Addams Family Crossovers [2]
Category: Addams Family - All Media Types, James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Addams Family Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, I Don't Even Know, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Plot Bunny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-18 20:19:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9401369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabricdragon/pseuds/fabricdragon
Summary: James Bond is on assignment in America, and meets a girl.  This wouldn't be a problem but the girl has a very interesting family: the Addams Family.The title is from a Billy Joel Song.At this time i have no idea if the stories in this collection are related.





	1. Assignment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whouseknecht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whouseknecht/gifts).



James Bond felt old.  It was a feeling he had more and more since M had died. Mallory was alright, and he needed to work, but his thoughts would drift back to days spent on a beach with some fondness… except of course he could never find anyone to share it with.

The casual sex felt more and more like work– no surprise really, since that was often what he had to do FOR work– that, and the women were more like girls, lately.  Spying was a young person’s game, and even in his forties he was old for field work.  Most Double-Os never made it to retirement age anyway.

He found himself sometimes wondering if he shouldn’t just let himself get killed at the conclusion of some last mission– the problem being the prime time to get killed on a mission was when you couldn’t get killed or the mission failed.  Bond knew he couldn’t deliberately fail in a mission, since if it wasn’t important he would have told MI6 to sod off anyway.

This one was going to be in America, of all places.

America was a strange country. Well, really it was several strange countries with a delusion of belonging together.  There was no way you could convince him that New Orleans and Kansas City were part of the same country.  He’d seen a map of the cultural divisions of the United States, and that looked more like it: five or six countries with completely different cultures that just sort of spoke the same language.

Sort of.

He wasn’t at all sure the Texans spoke the same language, and he was QUITE certain that once you left the big cities in Georgia they didn’t speak English.  Still, that wasn’t entirely fair– they didn’t speak English in some of the rural areas of England, either.

The one thing they all had in common was that the BBC English accent was apparently the key to almost any woman’s bedroom– Bond had to admit that was convenient. Every American woman he had met, and some of the men, reacted to a standard received pronunciation– and most other British accents– like they were hypnotized. He’d finally decided it was all the movies they watched.

He got off the plane in New York and rented a car, drove to Connecticut where he picked up the replacement car and his partner, and they set off for Boston.  His partner for this was a British agent who had been working in America for several years–doing something; Bond didn’t need to know- and was familiar with the area they were going to.  His cover name was Franklin, and he was a mixed race fellow who looked about ten years younger than he was.

“Have you been to Massachusetts before?” Franklin asked him, as he apparently tried to get them killed on the Connecticut highways. _Americans were horrible drivers, worse than the French._

“Briefly.” Bond tried not to grab hold of the door.

“Boston drivers are the worst.”

Bond just looked at him. “Really?”

“Oh yes, I hate driving in Boston.” Franklin took his eyes off the road to fiddle with the radio.

“Can I manage the radio for you?” Bond resisted the urge to grab the wheel.

“No, no, you just relax, I know the long flights are awful. We’ll be fine. Besides, we’re mostly going to be closer to Wooster, and then Cambridge.”

“Wooster?” Bond stared at his map. _Oh, right, Worcester. Well, some things were like home._

“Yeah, Massachusetts is the most like home, really. It can be a bit of a shock, going along, thinking it’s like home and then getting socked in the assumptions.”

“Anything I should know?”

“Yah, lemonade.”

“What about it?”

“It’s not soda–it’s not Fanta or Sprite. You want a lemon fizzy you ask for the name. If you ask for a lemonade they give you fruit juice, sugar, and water.”

Bond blinked that this was apparently mission critical information to the man.

“That and only a handful of places serve decent tea, although you’ve better odds in Massachusetts than other places.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”  _The man was clearly not a field agent._

“Oh, and most weapons are illegal; not sure what the new rules are about spikes on clothing– those were illegal here for a while.”

“What?” Bond stared at him. “You’re joking.”

“No.  It’s like home, only more so.”

“Most American cities–“

“No. New York City, most of  Massachusetts– Boston especially– and a lot of the college areas  are supposedly No Gun zones, and in Boston that means no knives, and no spikes, and all that too… except for the fact that they have no border control, so…”

“So it’s illegal as all hell, but all the criminals are as heavily armed as I would expect for Americans?”

“Basically. Oh, and you have to watch the MIT kids.”

“The college?”

“Yeah, those kids make up explosives and stuff.”

“I need to be warned about this?”

“Yeah.  That and the computer hacking. Your credit cards can get lifted mid-mission by a scanner and then you have a problem.”

Bond just sagged. “Right. Hopefully we can find them, shoot them, and get back to someplace sane.”

Just a week later Franklin was dead, and Bond was trying to find someplace to hide.  The investigation into espionage and information leaks had led to a group developing biowarfare weapons under cover of the university system.  Bond had managed to destroy most of their samples, and a lot of their research, but…

He was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t caught something.

It could just be a normal illness. It could be the result of stress, and his aim still being so damned off that he missed perfectly normal shots… or he might be infected with the carrier virus they were using… or it could be a bio-weapon.  In which case, he either had to get to someplace remote until a quarantine team could be called in– or find a way to incinerate himself.

When he first saw the house, he thought he was hallucinating.  A few blinks later and he realized it was just a rather older home, with a lot of decorative design details, and it had been painted oddly.  The yard was overgrown and looked untended, so it was probably empty. If he recalled correctly, it was break time for a lot of the colleges.

He went around to the back and broke in.  He could find a phone-call for help.

There were ravens and owls painted on all the cabinets in the kitchen, and the entire kitchen was black and dark brown.  He shook his head.  There was a shelf full of spice jars, with old apothecary labels– “Eye of Newt” and “Cyanide”– like you’d see for Halloween. _College kids._

He staggered on, looking for a phone.  Somehow he stumbled over a bearskin rug, and imagined he heard it roaring at him.  He fell over and lay, sick and dizzy, on the floor.

“There’s a dead body in my living room? Is it Christmas?”  he heard a female voice say.

He groaned, _she had to stay away_. “Contagious…”

“Oh! You’re alive? Hello Contagious, my name’s Euphoria.”

“No…” _Daft bird._ “I’m contagious…”

“That’s what I said.”

“I’m sick… you have to stay away… you’ll get sick…”

He felt cool hands touching his forehead, and distantly felt himself being moved…


	2. Granny’s recipe herbs and violence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW Bond canon typical violence, combat, medical

Bond woke up, feeling like he’d gone a few rounds with the combat instructors, but alive and clear headed.  He rolled onto his back, opened his eyes, and looked up.

There was a vulture looking down at him.

He yowled and rolled off the bed.

A second glance revealed that there was a taxidermy vulture on the shelf above the headboard.  He looked around: he was in something that looked like a bedroom if… if… uh… _Goths? Maybe?_

Everything was sepia tone or black, and there were a LOT of taxidermy animals, skeletal animals, and so on, sort of randomly… _Oh, the spare bedroom was being used for storage– maybe of the Halloween décor?_

He was nude, he suddenly realized.  He looked around and found his clothes hanging up in the otherwise empty closet, along with his guns and his knives.  So his mystery benefactor had stripped him, but it was all still here… He got dressed, which seemed exhausting, and started to put away his weapons– then he stared at them: they’d been cleaned, oiled, and at least one of his knives expertly sharpened.

The door opened and he spun, expecting anything except the college girl standing there with a tray of soup.

She was wearing an oversized orange sweater, and a terribly short skirt, over leggings with so many holes in them that Bond had to assume that was deliberate.  She had dishwater blonde hair pulled back in a messy bun, with a pencil stuck through it, and a pair of glasses tucked across the neck of her sweater. After several blinks Bond realized that she was fairly pretty, albeit not a typical beauty: one eye was blue and one was green, and her nose was a little crooked, but it looked good on her.

“I brought you lunch!” she said helpfully.

“Thank you?  I… I’m sorry, but I don’t remember who you are?”

“Well, I’m Euphoria Addams, and I thought your name was Contagious, but apparently it isn’t– you were just saying you were sick.”

She put the tray down on a dresser and unfolded a small table. She waved Bond to sit on the bed. He collapsed onto it, realizing that just getting dressed had worn him out.

“I didn’t think you’d be up to eating at the table yet.” She pulled up a chair and sat down. “So what IS your name?”

“James Bond… I was exposed to something very bad in a lab, and honestly I’m not sure why I’m alive right now.” He looked worriedly at her, “Do you feel alright?”

“Oh, I’m an Addams, we hardly ever get sick,” she shrugged. “You were very sick; I gave you some of Granny’s plague tea– cures almost anything.” She waved at the bowl with a hunk of bread next to it. “I didn’t have any of the things you lot have for sick beds… so I made Ox eye soup?  It’s good…”

Bond dipped a spoon into it and startled badly as a rather large eyeball floated to the surface.

“Ox… eye… soup?” he said, staring down at it.

She flushed, “Yes, well, I only had two Ox eyes, so I made up the rest with broth and vegetables, but I’m sure it’s still good for you.” She looked very embarrassed, “I wasn’t expecting company.”

“No, no… quite alright,” Bond said, his usual manners coming to the fore. He sipped the soup– _it was actually pretty good, if you could ignore the eyeball._

He finished the soup and sopped everything up with the bread, realizing he was ravenous.

“Are… are you not going to eat the eye?” she asked sounding a bit concerned.

“Well… uh… no?”

“Would you mind?” she said waving a fork.

He shook his head and she speared the eyeball carefully and popped it in her mouth.  After she swallowed she admitted, “I adore Ox eyes, it’s why I only had two to cook with.”

“You probably shouldn’t have,” he suddenly realized, “in case I’m still contagious…”

“Oh, no, your fever broke yesterday, and Granny’s recipes never fail. I’ll get you a pitcher of water…. Do you drink alcohol?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll bring you some absinthe, then, with supper.” She nodded. “Get your strength back.”

“I need to make a phone call; it’s very important.”

“Oh... All I have is my cell phone, and it’s charging at the moment– I forgot to charge it last night.” She looked apologetic again, “I can bring it up with dinner?”

“Certainly–“ There was a crashing noise and a scream from downstairs.

“What on earth?” she frowned.

“If it’s the people looking for me, you need to run.  Go out the window or something!” Bond tried to move to the door and staggered, still weak.

“Nonsense,” she said, helping him back to the bed. “I’m sure it’s just some of the frat boys.”

The “frat boys” burst into the room in hazmat suits with automatic weapons. Bond could see them staring at him as if they were looking at a ghost. He slowly put his hands up.

“I’m still very weak,” he said calmly. “I can’t really get up steadily…”

“Uh… James? Are these people you know?” she said.

One of the men snarled, “She’s been exposed, then. Take them both.”

Bond had his guns stripped off of him, and his knives– he thought he saw her grab one, but he wasn’t sure– then they were shoved into  containment suits–practically bags, really– and dragged into a van.

They were eventually put into a containment lab– it looked rather hastily set up– and stripped out of their biohazard suits.  The senior medical person– _so he’d survived, damn it_ – on the other side of a glass window just stared at him.

“He was exposed! I’m sure of it! He should be DEAD!”

“Um… really? Why are we in a bio lab?... and... uh... Excuse me, but isn’t that professor  Malcolm?” Euphoria sounded confused. She was looking at one of the junior researchers over near the equipment.

The man snapped his head up. “Euphoria? Euphoria Addams?!”

The man running the show stepped into view. Bond had only gotten a few brief glimpse of him before.

“You know the girl? Bond was in her house.”

“Euphoria Addams. She’s a legacy student– the Addams family endows a lot of work at the University… She’s a student in bio-engineering– when she bothers to show up for class, that is.” He finished with a rather grumpy sound.

“Professor Malcolm? What are you DOING here?”

Bond finally managed to get hold of her arm. “Euphoria? I’m afraid they’re making bioweapons…”

“Why?” she said, blinking at him.

The chief villain took that as his opportunity to monologue.  Bond tried to pay attention, although it was difficult because he found it so hard to stand up; he finally collapsed into a chair.  Euphoria stood there listening the whole time.

“So… you want to wipe out everyone you don’t vaccinate… and you only want people you like, or who listen to you?  That sounds rather dull,” she said, staring at him. “Seriously?”

“What I need NOW, Miss Addams, is for you to tell me exactly what condition he was in when you found him, and what you did to treat him. You’re a promising researcher; there could be a place for you in our group.”

Bond hoped she would play along.

“Well, first of all, you’re an idiot, and no one in my family would ever work for you.”

_So much for that._

“At least James was polite: he even apologized for throwing up on my best sweater.”

“I don’t actually remember that…” Bond said, blinking, “but I’m sorry?”

“As to his condition? Fever of 103 and some spare change– “ She looked at James, “That’s American.  Fahrenheit. It’s not a good number for humans.”

Bond converted quickly to Celsius and winced. The researchers were making notes.

“He was shaking, sweating,  and threw up on me when I moved him.  He occasionally regained consciousness, but was delirious most of the time. He seemed to be having constant nightmares while he was unconscious or sleeping–“

“Well, that worked properly,” one of the people in the lab with them said, his voice muffled from the bio suit.

“And I gave him some of our family home remedies and his fever broke, and he’d only just had his first bowl of soup since then when you broke in.”

“He threw UP on you?” Professor Malcolm looked horrified.

“Yes.”

“And he was sweating, and coughing and you touched him?”

“I said that, didn’t I?”

“They should both be dead,” said the lead researcher.

Bond looked dubious, “Antibiotics?”

The chief researcher snorted, “It’s viral.” He nodded at the man in charge, “I don’t believe them.”

The man in charge nodded and, as Bond expected, the men in the room secured them both to medical tables.

“HEY!” Euphoria shouted, “Let go of me!”

Bond said tiredly, “She doesn’t know anything worth torturing her for.”

“On the contrary, Mr. Bond. She might have a clue as to why you are alive, and she isn’t sick.”

Professor Malcolm looked uneasy; usually these types weren’t torturing people they knew. Bond decided to dig in the knife a bit, “So Professor Malcolm, will you be able to look her family in the eyes when you tell them she’s dead?”

“Dead?!” Euphoria looked startled. “I didn’t miss that many classes…”

“Bitch, we’re going to dissect you,” said one of the men, getting out phlebotomy equipment.

“Uh,no! We aren’t even dating!”

At that point Bond was somewhat distracted by having a man stab into his hip with what felt like a javelin. He screamed.

“James?” Euphoria sounded very calm, although it might be shock… They were putting a mask over his face, and everything hurt.

He distantly heard someone gurgle… and then there were people screaming…

He managed to focus enough to see a man fire a gun– on automatic– at Euphoria. She dove out of the way and the glass behind her– the glass into the observation room– shattered under the bullets– it was only glass after all; it wasn’t intended to be bulletproof.

Euphoria cut his restraints and pulled him off the table.  They’d punctured into his hip, and his arm was cut and bleeding.  She tied a handkerchief over it.

“They’re shooting each other, I think they’re upset,” she said nodding.

“They’ll kill us, and if there was any of the virus left we have to destroy it.” Bond tried to get up– failed.

“Hang on, I have to kill that guy,” she said pleasantly.  She stood up and Bond saw her throw his knife– the one she’d grabbed at the house– cleanly into the leaders throat. “YES!” She pumped her fist in the air and dropped back down. “HAH! So much for coming in third after Wednesday and Ophelia at the family knife throwing contest!”

“What?” He stared at her. “You have family knife throwing contests?”

“Sure, doesn’t everyone?”

“No. Can you get rid of the rest of them?”

“I rather thought I’d wait for them to thin their numbers.”

“Sensible, I suppose. Oh!” He looked up into the face of one of the men from earlier– no Hazmat suit.

The man reached down and hauled Euphoria to her feet, holding a gun to her stomach. “I’m going to make you die slowly–“ It cut off in a gurgle as James managed to throw one of the fallen scalpels into his neck.  He dropped the gun trying to pull it out.

“Oh, wow... That was a great throw!” Euphoria  said delightedly. Bond grabbed the gun and shot the man, just to be sure.

“We have to get out of here and call for help,” Bond managed to grit out. The pain was becoming unbearable in a way that promised unconsciousness soon.

Euphoria helped him onto one of the gurneys, and used the gun to blow apart the makeshift containment airlock– it was an emergency set up, after all. She rolled them out and helped Bond crawl into the van.

He gave her a phone number– at least, he tried to– and passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Euphoria is sort of dressed like Velma from Scooby Doo, yes


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an old, old, old family recipe

He woke up shaking and shocky with Euphoria trying to get him to drink something.

“Look, I probably shouldn’t, but drink this? Please?”

“Euphoria?  You have to run… call the number…”

“If you drink this, I will.”

He gave up and drank it. The most vile, horrible taste filled his mouth, and in the next instant he felt like every bone in his body was breaking.  His veins burned; he could feel every single nerve in his body trying to burn out. He wished he could pass out; he wished he would die.  An electric arc lashed through him– his heart stopped; another– it started again. He was screaming… He screamed for a long time.

Eventually he was shuddering and shaking on the sofa.

Euphoria tucked his blankets around him. “I’m sorry.”

“What… what happened?”  The question seemed completely insufficient.

“I gave you an old family recipe? You… You were… Anyway, you’ll be better now. A lot better. I’m sorry.”

“How old was that family recipe?” Bond asked. It had tasted like it was scraped off the bottom of a particularly dirty boot, and he was certain it almost killed him.

“Uh… Sumerian, I think. You’ll feel better soon. At least you stopped screaming, finally.”

His head fell to the side.  There were three dead bodies on the floor, two in hazmat gear.

“More of them?”

“Oh… Well, the one over there died when they broke in the first time. Those two came in while you were screaming.”

“You killed them?”

“They were rude,” she said frowning.

“I don’t mind… but you are a VERY strange girl.”

“Yes, yes I am.” She sighed. “You wanted to call someone. Are you some kind of health inspector? Or with the CDC?”

“No.” _There wasn’t much point in lying to her._ “I’m a spy, a secret agent.  I was looking into some… We thought it was just espionage… turned out to be a lot more.” He couldn’t move.

“Oh. Um... That’s complicated.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, they’ll ask questions.” She frowned. “Look, I don’t want to be locked up in a lab or anything, and I can’t let them do that to you.”

“They won’t.”

“Yes, they will,” she nodded. “They’ll find out I cured you and then I saved your life again, and they’ll be annoying.  They’ll want the recipe, and it’s just for family.”

He stared at her. “Wait…” His mind finally cleared a bit. “You actually cured their bioweapon? With tea?!”

“Granny’s plague tea, yes. In all fairness I didn’t know it was a bioweapon, I just thought you had plague or something.” She looked thoughtful, “Maybe Ebola, although really, you weren’t bleeding.”

“If… If you can cure a bioweapon with tea, shouldn’t someone… know about it?”

“No.”

Bond tried to think, but he was missing something. “Why not?”

“Because humans are weird.  You’d think that when they find out there are other people out there, who are friendly and good neighbors, but they’re just different, that it would be… okay? Only it never is. Not really.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look, the easiest way to explain this is to say I’m a witch, a real one.” She frowned at him. “People always want to deal with us when we’re useful, but the second things go wrong….”

“You’re a witch?”

“No– or rather, yes– but that’s oversimplifying things… a lot.” She sat him up. He realized he was nude again.

She was having to hold him up because he felt limp. She propped him up against the back of the sofa. She got up and went away. After a while, he heard the beep of a microwave, then she came back.

“Here.” She held a cup of instant noodle soup to his lips. “And if you ever tell my mother I have a microwave, or ramen soup, I will boil you.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He drank it.  It helped.

“Give me the number to call, but we’re going to have to lie a lot.”

“Lie how?”

“Well you obviously got DRUGGED, not  infected. That kind of lie.”

He had to admit that would work. “Alright.” He didn’t understand what was going on, but the important part was that this girl saved him, and probably most of the world, and he owed her.

He gave her the emergency number. “They’ll say it’s an import-export business. Ask for Mr. Mallory. Keep asking. Use my name. When you get through, you can hand me the phone.” He tried to lift his hand. “Or put me on speaker.”

He distantly heard her asking for Mallory, patiently, over and over. He heard his name.  Eventually he realized she was holding a phone up: it was on speaker.

“Bond,” he said.

“Bond? Are you alright?” Mallory’s voice.

“No, I’ve been drugged, injured, and beaten… “– he considered things that would leave him flat but not be infected –“and repeatedly electrocuted.  A civilian risked her life to help me… It’s a bioweapon, M; I think I destroyed it all, but we need full response.”

“Good God!”

He gave him the university and the names he knew.  Euphoria spoke up, “Professor Malcolm got out, and the bio containment lab was at one of the school storage facilities.” She gave the address. “They seemed to think we had been infected, but we weren’t.  Then they tried to recruit me.”

“And you are?” Mallory asked.

“Euphoria Addams, I study Bio sciences. Professor Malcolm is one of my professors, when we get him and not a TA.”

“You will both need to be quarantined…”

“No.”

“It’s a safety precaution…”

“No.”

“You don’t have much choice, I’m afraid, young lady.”

“You sound British.”

“I am.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, well we will be working with the American authorities to clean this up.”

“Goodie, I’ll call my family. You can come by every day and take my temperature or something, but if I am being quarantined, then we’re doing it in MY house.”

Bond spoke up, “They were convinced that if I’d been infected, I would be dead already. I think it’s safe to say we weren’t exposed.”

“Where are you?”

Euphoria snorted. “You call me when you get here, or whatever. Bye.”

She put her head down. Bond still couldn’t lift his head or arms.

“I feel insanely weak, but not sick.”

“Yeah, that’s just your body trying to cope with having been reanimated.”

“… What did you say?”

“I said I was sorry, James. I reanimated you. You… um…”

“You’re saying I was DEAD?”

“NO! It only works if you are alive to start with, sort of… You do something entirely different to reanimate a dead one.  Your heart was still beating and your brain was still intact, but I wasn’t sure how long that would last… I’m sorry.”

“Why do you keep apologizing?” Bond had a horrified thought. “I’m GOING to be able to move again, aren’t I?”

“Oh, yes. You’ll be stronger and quite a bit tougher… and you won’t age as fast.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Not if they find out.” She looked at him sadly. “Tell me, what would your spy agency do if they thought they could make a super soldier?”

“Make one, I suppose.”

“Yup. They would, everyone would. Think about it.”

Bond thought about it.  He decided he didn’t like the idea one bit.  Euphoria went into the kitchen and came back with what looked like raw sliced meat and started feeding it to him.  It tasted like heaven.

“I gotta call my family.” She sighed. “Not all of them really understand Ordinary politics, but some do.”

She got on the phone; after a few moments, she asked for “Senator Addams,” and waited.

“Family business, Euphoria Addams calling.”

She waited more. Obviously, he was arranging a secure place to talk; Bond was familiar with that.

“Hi, Euphoria of the Massachusetts Addams,” she said. “Apparently a British secret agent fell over in my house? Anyway, there’s a bunch of people about to descend on my college professor and there’s some kind of bioweapon problem.  The spy’s boss wants to quarantine us both.”

Bond wondered what kind of family–or Senator–took “British secret agent fell over in my house” as the normal part of the  briefing.

She listened to the phone and fed him more meat.

“No, I can’t just hand the spy over– I had to reanimate him.”  A brief pause. “NO, he was alive.” She nodded a lot. “I called you: Dad wouldn’t understand, and Mom would just want to kill everyone.

“Sure thing, thanks.”

She sat down next to him on the sofa. “Well, that’s a start.”

“Mom would just want to kill everyone?” he asked. “Where does she rank in the knife throwing contests?”

Euphoria giggled, “Dad is the knife thrower; Mom prefers poison.  She’s always been so upset at me for eating junk food.”

She laid him flat back on the sofa again, and started dragging bodies out of the living room.  He fell asleep.

After a while he woke up, and it occurred to him to wonder what she was going to do with the bodies. “Euphoria?”

“Yes?”

“What are you doing with the bodies?”

“Putting the older one in the Nightshade and Roses garden, because he’s stale, and feeding the other two to the ravens, why?”

Bond blinked a lot, “People get upset about bodies…”

“Oh, I’ll donate the skeletons to the medical lab, they’ll love it.”

Bond had to admit that was an efficient way of hiding bodies. “That’s convenient.”

“Isn’t it?” She walked back in, wiping her hands on a towel. “Great, great  Morphismo Addams was one of the very first suppliers  to Harvard medical!” 

“You’re very practical.” Bond didn’t know how to say, _I admire a girl who isn’t squeamish and knows how to get rid of bodies._

She didn’t seem to take practical as a compliment. She sighed. “My entire family is just so disappointed in how banal I am.”

Bond laughed, “Whatever you are, Euphoria, you aren’t banal!”

“Really?” She looked at him hopefully. “I’m one of those weirdos in the family, like Senator Addams and a few of my distant cousins and uncles. I’m always getting told to stop being so banal, and boring, and… stop wearing funny colors and stuff.”

“Well, the orange was kind of off on your coloring, but you aren’t boring, or banal, and you have a hell of an aim, and you know how to get rid of bodies.” He smiled woozily as he felt unconsciousness–or maybe sleep– pulling him down. “Definitely wife material…” _Well, for a spy, anyway._

He felt someone tuck him in, and distantly heard a woman say, in French, “{And to think my Mom is convinced I’ll never meet a sweet talking man like Daddy.}”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> welcome to a new day

Chapter 4

Bond woke up with sunlight streaming in the windows and stretched. He felt better than he had in years. His stomach growled; he padded off to the kitchen and looked in the fridge.

Sometime later Euphoria came in. “Oh, good, you’re up!”

Bond suddenly became aware of the fact that he was surrounded by the remains of quite a bit of random foodstuffs. “I… I guess I was hungry?” He stood up. “I can obviously move, so apparently I’ve recovered.” He strode over to her. She was grinning up at him happily.

“I am SO glad I kept a dose of that on hand,” she said happily. She was wearing a short dress in black and white that didn’t do much for her curves, and a cardigan. None of it was orange, he was happy to see.

“How can I thank you?” he said pulling her into an embrace and letting his lips rest against her ear.

She pulled back and laughed at him. “Well, first of all, go take a shower.”

He suddenly pulled back, looking a bit embarrassed. “Oh. Yes, I must reek by now.” He nodded. “Sorry, just feeling really… good.”

“Upstairs, third door. Everything should be in there. I went out and got some sweatpants and a t-shirt, for now.”

He went up and found an old-fashioned bathroom that had been upgraded with a rather luxurious shower in one corner. He eyed the antique clawed bath tub with a bit of wistfulness, but a shower would be better.

She’d left out a new toothbrush, razor, and clean towels. The bar of soap was weird looking–bright red with black flecks in it–but it smelled like cherry and spice.

He was shaving when he first realized: _My shoulder doesn’t hurt. I didn’t cut myself shaving when my hand shook, or drop the soap, or have trouble shampooing my hair…_

He dried off and walked to the full length mirror near the tub. The scar on his shoulder from where Eve had shot him was faded, flat, and smooth– _almost invisible unless you knew where to look._ It had been a raised and ropey thing when he last looked at it, two weeks and a lifetime ago. He turned and looked for the scarring from the whip– _gone._ The bullet wound in his leg and the scar from the surgery that told him when the weather was changing– _a faint whisper of discolored skin._ He looked at his hip where they drove in a rod just yesterday, and his arm that had been slashed deep enough to damage muscle– _nothing._

He got dressed in the sweatpants and shirt, and looked at his face, really looked. The lines that had been more pronounced were fading, the discoloration from too much sun, and too much alcohol, and too many cigarettes, was like it had been a decade ago.

He came downstairs much more subdued.

“Euphoria?”

“In the kitchen, I ordered pizza.”

He walked in. She’d ordered eight pizzas with various toppings, but half of them seemed to be “all the meat, and then some”. He suddenly realized he was ravenous again.

After inhaling at least half a pizza, he looked at her. “What did you say you did?”

“I reanimated you.”

“And that means what, exactly?”

“You’re stronger, tougher, faster”– she giggled–“but it didn’t cost six million dollars. Anyway, you’ll heal faster, and age better. Other than that, it kind of varies.”

“Most of my scars are gone or fading and the injuries from the lab are gone.”

“Well, yeah, that was the point.”

“You really aren’t just human, are you?”

“No.” She looked serious then. “No, James, I’m not– neither are you, anymore.” She sighed, “Technically I’m responsible for you.”

“Because you did this?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “In the old days you would just be assumed to belong to me, or get married to me, or something. I don’t think anyone has reanimated a LIVE person in decades though, or, if they did, no one told me. As far as I know, I mostly have to keep you from causing a problem, or getting noticed.”

Bond stared at her. “So there are more people like you?”

She grinned. “Oh, no. I’m the weird one in the family, like the Senator: going to a normal school, taking normal classes–only a few of us in each generation do. That’s why we have the house here, though: it’s a college house for anyone in the family that goes to college near Boston.”

“Your professor said you were a legacy student, your family endowed a lot.”

She nodded. “And we’re established here, so people don’t question it much.”

“I’ll be expected to go back to England,” he said, suddenly realizing the implications– he never liked a leash, even a pretty one, even one that saved his life.

“Oh.” She looked disappointed.

“Euphoria, even if I wanted to, I would have a lot of things to wrap up before I could leave my job. If I tried to just quit, it would cause more problems,” he said gently.

“I expect I can transfer to a college there? For like a year.” She looked at him. “You’ll need someone to help you adjust, and stuff.”

“Will your background stand up to a security check?” He had to admit, she knew more about what was going on than he did, and having her around wasn’t exactly a hardship.

She laughed, “I’m Euphoria Addams, Bio Science major, tends to wander off and do her own thing, gets good grades when I bother, really rich eccentric family. I even still have relatives in England and Europe.”

“Would any of them be a problem? For security?”

“I have no idea. I only know a couple from when some of them visited, and one relative went to college here in the states when I was a kid. I can find out?”

He ate more pizza. “What happens if you reanimate a dead person? You said you could.”

“Usually they come back kind of simpler. I guess a bit more like what people expect? They look pale, or grey, or greenish, and they sometimes don’t talk, but they’re strong and tough. We use to use them for guards, but these days it’s frowned on.”

“So a zombie.”

“I guess?”

“But I’m not going to go around looking for brains and biting people, right?” he said flexing his shoulder, still amazed that nothing hurt.

“Most reanimates like meat, but,” she waved at the pizza, “pizza, steak, chicken… it works.” She shrugged, “I think you just need more protein to fuel the repairs, myself, but I wasn’t inclined to mess with it.” She grinned at the odd look on his face. “Bio major, remember?”

He ate some more pizza.

After thinking for a while he nodded. “You know, I think this is the longest I’ve ever spent with a pretty girl and NOT slept with her?”

“You think I’m pretty? I’m considered very plain in my family.”

“Well, you don’t dress to show off,” he admitted.

She went out of the room and came back with an old fashioned photo album. “Here. Family photos.”

He went over some of the strangest photos he’d ever seen. Most were in black and white, but some were in color and…

“Is that one of the dead reanimates?” he said waving at a really strange group picture.

“Lurch? Yes. He was an Addams family retainer back in the… oh gee, I don’t know. Anyway they reanimated him after he died.” She pointed at a good looking woman dressed as a child– it didn’t hide the curves. “That’s my cousin Wednesday; she took first in the knife throwing contest.” She moved her finger to hover over a stunningly beautiful woman dressed up as a vampire. “Her mom, aunt Morticia. She is SO good looking–of course, she’s a Frump: they all are.”

“Frump usually means plain,” Bond said.

“Really? The Frump side of the family is all like that, tall, willowy, intense…” she sighed. “I practically look Ordinary.”

“I think you’re very attractive, and I’m not just saying that because you saved my life.” He gave her one of the smiles that usually got him forgiven, or into bed, “I’ve had some very beautiful women save my life– or try to kill me,” he paused slightly, “or both.”

“Are you trying to flirt?” she said looking curiously at him. “We do it differently in the family.”

“How do you flirt in the family?”

“Well, either you poison them, give them explosives, or you start kissing.”

“I’ve been poisoned, and I’ve been far too close to too many explosions. I didn’t find them sexy.”

“You’re not an Addams.” She smirked, “Or you weren’t.”

“How about we go right to kissing?”

“Deal, but let’s get out of the kitchen.” She closed up the photo album and walked away, putting it on a shelf in the living room.

He pulled her into his arms and started kissing her; it was different, somehow–he felt almost dizzy. He pressed his face into her neck, and her hair smelled like flowers.

“You smell nice; did anyone ever tell you that?”

“Belladonna and wolfsbane, with dragonsblood and white roses…” she said, grinning up at him. “You smell like death and guns: I like it.”

She paused.

“You’re going to have to meet the family.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> incidentally, i am a DEDICATED and obsessive BPAL Fan. BPAL makes the best perfumes ever, anywhere, hundreds of them... and they don't give me migraines unlike most commercial perfumes.  
> https://blackphoenixalchemylab.com/  
> (some NSFW images may appear on this site)  
> so if you feel like you need a perfume of poisonous plants and roses... there's your shop.


	5. epilogues and new beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bond heads home to London...

Chapter 5

Bond sat quietly in the first class section of the airplane, heading home.

Euphoria and he had been quarantined in her house for two weeks. The agency had wanted them bundled up and dropped at USAMRIID, but Senator Addams put his foot down. Then they’d wanted full hazmat teams on standby, but Bond had pointed out how very obvious THAT would be. M wanted to fly their own people over to do medical, and the Agency wanted no one touching them but their people, and that looked to get messy…

But Euphoria had pulled some strings–she seemed to have an inordinate number of connections–and had an ‘old family friend’ do the blood draws–an old family friend that had a bit of an archaic hairstyle and liked to dress in a very odd fashion…

By the second visit, Bond had decided not to ask if the fellow was as old as he seemed: he was afraid the answer might be ‘yes’.

They were clearly swapping out the blood samples. Euphoria pointed out that hers would be odd enough–but his?

“Try not to let them get your blood, James–seriously,” she’d said, after the various agencies finally gave up and decided they hadn’t been exposed after all. He understood: _the things people would do for that formula? It didn’t bear thinking about._

His appetite had settled down: he still ate like he was actively working out, even at rest, but he didn’t eat a whole beef roast–raw–anymore; she said it would probably keep settling slowly, but “If you get wounded, your protein needs will skyrocket. Hmmm….” Then she’d wandered off and started doing calculations and muttering about “Science has its place…”

It turned out that, while he did need meat, he could make up a lot of his needs with protein shakes.

“Bio science is useful!” she said cheerfully. “I’m writing a study up for the family. The last time anyone did a study on reanimation was back in the sixteen hundreds!”

She was arranging to come out to London for a year, but he would go back a month earlier to wrap up his business and settle things. The longer he spent with her, the more he realized that he wasn’t… he wasn’t going to be able to shake this off. She had an importance he could scarcely explain, and she’d saved his life…

She also didn’t seem inclined to try to pin him down or make him retire–she just pointed out facts.

“They will notice, James,” she said as he nosed into her hair. “You can see it when you look in a mirror… and there’s only so long you can pretend…”

“Then I’ll wrap things up and you can introduce me to the family. In the meantime, we’re quarantined and supposed to spend all our time in bed…”

She liked it slow and sweet and gentle, when he spent time just running his hands and lips over her; and she liked it wild and rough, and then he worried that he hurt her–but he never did.

“I worry about hurting you, you know.”

“Why?”

“As much violence as I’ve seen? Been part of? My demons tend to get a bit out of hand…”

She just smiled that crooked smile at him, “I think I know a bit more about demons: don’t worry.”

…

And here he was, about to walk back into MI6, looking a good ten years younger and feeling invincible…

He didn’t know how he would be able to tell them goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YES there will be a sequel. I am working on it and hope to have it up soon,   
> the new series name should be up within the day, please do subscribe to get notifications.


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